Barbara Cartland: Escape from Passion

Fleur came from the room where the Comtesse de Sardou lay dead.

After the heavy warm atmosphere of the sick room the air in the passage was chill but invigorating like a drink of cold water.

She went to one of the windows and pulled back the thick curtains. Outside in the garden the first rays of a pale sun were dispersing the white ground mist which covered the green lawns.

Fleur sighed and leant her hot forehead for a moment against the grey stone. There were dark lines of sleeplessness beneath her eyes, but she felt strangely at peace.

Away on the horizon she saw a wisp of black smoke, dark against the hazy blue of the sky. She knew that it was from the destruction of yesterday. All night its fire had glowed fiercely red, the result of Royal Air Force machines swooping low over the country early in the afternoon.

She had heard and felt the bombs that had fallen on the factory nearly ten miles away, a factory in which Frenchmen were turning out hundreds of lorries week after week for the use of their German masters.

The house had shivered and rattled at the impact, but the Comtesse, when she had been told what was happening, had murmured,

“It is good. Only the British can bring us freedom.”

“Hush, madame ,” Marie, her lady’s maid, had cautioned her. “It is not wise to say such things.”

But Fleur had smiled proudly. Yes, it was her countrymen who would bring freedom to the cowed and conquered French nation.

Now, looking at that thick pall of smoke, she thought of Lucien and thought how he too had ridden triumphantly through the skies only to fall, as some of those brave men had fallen yesterday, broken and burning to the ground.

At the memory Fleur’s eyes filled with tears.

‘It is odd,’ she thought, ‘at this moment for me to be crying for Lucien and not for his mother.’

It had been almost like a stage death, Fleur found herself thinking.

The fine aristocratic old lady with her white hair and finely chiselled features, a perfect portrait of the Grande Dame , the Priest beside her in his vestments and the grave grey-haired doctor.

Marie was sobbing audibly at the foot of the curtained bed in which generations of the Sardou family had come into this life and had departed from it.

Yet in the picture, unreal and slightly theatrical, there had been nothing to fear, nothing even of desperate unhappiness and misery.

Only now it was over was Fleur conscious of an immeasurable personal relief. It was as if some part of her had been tense and nerved for something horrible had shrunk in sensitive anticipation from a terror that had never come.

She had never seen anyone die and the thought of death was inexpressibly frightening until she found that it was nothing more than the closing of the eyes and the folding of the hands.

But death was not always like that. It was not how Lucien had died, yet perhaps for him it was quick and clean suddenly in the battle and in a moment of triumph.

For they had learnt that he had shot down his enemy, shot him down in flames and then met a similar fate himself. Lucien, gay, excited, laughing and falling out of the sunlit sky on to the earth of his beloved France.

Fleur stirred and, turning from the window, walked along the passage to her room.

Even after nearly three years it was hard for her to think of Lucien for any length of time without feeling that agony of physical loss that at first had seemed almost unbearable.

In her own room she bathed her face and started to take off the crumpled frock that she had worn all night.

While she was still half-undressed there came a tap at the door. It was Marie. In her hand she held a glass containing some whitish liquid.

“What is that?” Fleur asked.

“Monsieur le Docteur has sent it,” Marie replied. “You will drink it and sleep. You need sleep, ma pauvre, we all do.”

Wearily Fleur let her last remaining garments drop to the floor and then slipping over her head the soft silk nightgown that Marie held out for her, climbed into the lavender-scented, hand-embroidered linen.

“Drink this, ma petite ,” Marie said soothingly and without argument Fleur swallowed the draught. It tasted slightly gritty and bitter so that she made an involuntary grimace as she handed the empty glass back to Marie and then snuggled down on her pillows.

“I will call you later, mademoiselle .”

Marie pulled the heavy curtains over the open window. The room faded into a grey twilight and she went softly out and closed the door behind her.

Fleur closed her eyes.

It was sheer ecstasy to feel her muscles relax and her limbs sink into the softness of the featherbed. She felt sleep creeping over her in soft warm waves, encroaching, retreating and each time a little more of her consciousness was enveloped.

*

She awoke suddenly with a start to find that Marie was standing by her bed with a tray on which there was a steaming cup of coffee and some biscuits.

Fleur rubbed her eyes and sat up.

“I have had a marvellous sleep, Marie. What time is it?”

“Nearly three o’clock.”

“As late as that? Oh, you should not have let me sleep for so long.”

Marie smiled, her old eyes were swollen from crying but then she looked, Fleur thought, happier and less stricken than she had earlier in the day.

“What has been happening?”

“We have taken Madame down to the Chapel. She will lie there tonight and tomorrow and the day after will be internment.”

Fleur sat up and put out her hand for the coffee.

Then she gave a little exclamation.

“But Marie! This is our best coffee from our store and Madame’s biscuits!”

“Why not?” Marie asked defiantly. “What are we keeping them for? For those Germans? For those cousins who could not even come to receive her last blessing? No! You eat them, mam’selle , she would like you to have them. For the others, let them enjoy their ersatz.”

Marie almost spat out the words and her old hands were trembling.

“We must not condemn Madame’s relations unheard,” Fleur said reprovingly. “Perhaps they could not come here as permits from unoccupied territory are difficult to obtain.”

“They have never tried to come,” Marie said, “not all this time since Monsieur Lucien has been gone. But now that they are sure there are pickings, you will see they will gather round like vultures ready for the feast.”

“What do you mean?” Fleur asked. “The doctor notified them weeks ago that Madame was ill, but there was no reply. Have you heard now that someone is arriving?”

Marie shook her head.

“But they will come all the same,” she remarked.

“And only you and I to receive them,” Fleur said, dropping her chin reflectively on her hands. “I shall have to go away, Marie. It is all very well to deceive the Bosche but the family will not be so easily taken in.”

“But where will you go, mademoiselle ?”

“I don’t know.”

Fleur reached out her hand and took one of the sweet biscuits sprinkled with sugar that had been kept especially for Madame during all these months of privation.

But, although Marie might hide biscuits and brandy and other little delicacies to which Madame had been accustomed, she could not hide human beings and Fleur realised for the first time how dangerous her position was.

The months had gone by like a dream, smoothly and uneventfully.

The Germans had come to the house, it was true, but Madame had dealt with them, had made her own explanations and had granted their demands with a cool dignified disdain more insulting than abuse.

The Château was off the beaten track, they had not been required to billet men or Armies and they had not been molested in any way save that a certain part of the farm produce was removed, the car that had belonged to Lucien was taken from the garage and various farm implements were commandeered without explanation or excuse.